For Sir on Father’ Day 2017 My love of reading I will always attribute to my mother. It’s my dad who made me a writer.

I still have his copy of Roget’s Thesaurus from his college days and won’t use any other version. When I worked for him as a legal secretary during college breaks, like any word lover, I delighted in learning the legalese, especially hearing it in his voice through the tiny Dictaphone.

That’s not the point of this story though. The real story is about summers on the Jersey Shore when I was little. One summer (I thing it was Ortley Beach), my Dad and I were constructing some sort of sand pile, and the whole time I was telling him some convoluted little kid story. He asked me questions while we packed in the sand, made a little moat, and filled it with water. I can still feel the grainy wet sand against my legs, and the firmness of the sand as we tried to pack in into some kind of tower shape.

But what I remember most is his attention, his presence. That he was there and that he cared enough to listen to my childish babbling. I feel the same today. That he is there.

The thought that this will someday not be true is simply more than I can bear to contemplate.

My father is an exceptional and highly recognized lawyer, which is fitting because he has always been my strongest advocate.

He is currently Of Counsel at a prominent firm in New Jersey, and he mentors several younger lawyers. I hope they know how lucky they are. I have a feeling that they do.

Happy Father’s Day, Sir. You’ve been around for 75 years and lived a whole life before my arrival. But you’ve been my father for all of my 50 years. My forever. My benchmark, my protector, my teacher. I am so proud of you in so many ways, and I hope, despite of all the ridiculous messes I’ve made in my life, that in some small way, you are proud of me too.

Out of respect for your (non) enjoyment of poetry, I have opted not to include a poem with this post. Just this.

All love, always and forever. Happy Father’s Day,

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It’s been seven years since my first Lenten project: Radical Lent: A Poetic Approach to 40 Days in the Wilderness. In rereading some of those posts for inspiration, it struck me how very much has changed in my life since that time: I am divorced, I am no longer the mother of young children, I’ve fallen into and climbed out of addiction, I’ve lost my license and (sort of) gotten it back, I’ve bought and sold a house, and am now I’m a renter again for the first time in 20 years, I’ve lost a job in academia and found a new one in human services, my relationships with two of the loves of my life (Noah and Jacob) have become very difficult, and I’m exploring new love with an amazing man. Woah.

Choosing to embark on a new Lenten blog, an intentional 40-day practice after all of this time comes out of the realization that I’ve finally started to move from a completely internal mindset to an external one. I’ve learned to pay attention again. And I want so much to pay attention with you! I’ve missed you!

An example of what I mean by being stuck in an internal mindset is that in 2016, I missed the entire spring season. I wasn’t working, I was barely doing anything, barely leaving my home, barely talking to anyone, barely finding a reason to wake up in the mornings, and then one day I drove out with a friend, and the entire world had become green. Months had gone by and the world had shifted from winter to “things mostly green.” I was stunned. I was speechless. I had missed an entire earth shift.

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This morning, I was fortunate to be the guest preacher at my home church in Champaign Urbana, McKinley Presbyterian. McKinley is a loving, inclusive place, and Pastor Heidi Weatherford and Associate Pastor Keith Harris work harder than anyone I know to follow the well-known directive to “preach the Gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.”

The scripture reading today was Matthew 14: 22-33, the story of the storm, when Peter steps out of the boat towards Jesus but becomes fearful and begins to sink. Jesus saves him, and then says to Peter, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Below is the text of my sermon. Thank you so very much to the wonderful congregation at McKinley for allowing me to offer this testimony.

*********

“You of little faith, why did you doubt?” This question has always struck me as a kind of blow, a slap. “Peter, why didn’t you do better? Why didn’t you listen? Haven’t you been watching, learning, and by the way, did you just miss that whole scene with the loaves and the fishes?”

But perhaps if we consider Jesus’ question to Peter not as a rebuke or a chastisement, but rather as a sincere inquiry, we might hear something like this: “Peter, what happened? What are you afraid of? Where is the conviction, and the belief, and the courage that you had only moments ago?”

Jesus’ question might not actually be, “Why did you doubt me?” but rather, “Why did you doubt you? Why did you doubt your own deep longing, and your desire to step forward towards something you are so very desperate to believe in?”

The poet David Whyte has something of an answer for these questions, and it can be found in his poem, “The Truelove.” As a poet, writer, and highly sought after organizational consultant, Whyte has worked for organizations all over the world bringing poetry and his own form of servant leadership to companies who are trying to do things differently than they have in the past. “The Truelove” was written for a group of nuns who were struggling with the reorganization of the health care company that they ran. So this poem is not simply about romantic love; it is about claiming the work and the life that is rightfully our own.

The Truelove

There is a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours
especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this
loved and beckoning hand
held out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now
and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are
worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides
I remember an old man
who walked every morning
on the grey stones
to the shore of baying seals

who would press his hat
to his chest in the blustering
salt wind and say his prayer
to the turbulent Jesus
hidden in the water

and I think of the story
of the storm and everyone
waking and seeing
the distant
yet familiar figure
far across the water
calling to them

and how we are all
preparing for that
abrupt waking,
and that calling,
and that moment
we have to say yes,
except it will
not come so grandly
so Biblically
but more subtly
and intimately in the face
of the one you know
you have to love

so that when
we finally step out of the boat
toward them, we find
everything holds
us, and everything confirms
our courage, and if you wanted
to drown you could,
but you don’t
because finally
after all this struggle
and all these years
you don’t want to any more
you’ve simply had enough
of drowning
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness
however fluid and however
dangerous to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.

While there are many beautiful elements in this poem, the one I’d like to call special attention to this morning is the somewhat startling truth that when we step out of the boat towards what we are longing for, towards what we truly desire, despite the fact that everything holds us, if we wanted to drown we could. But why would we want to? Why indeed.

In “Let Your Life Speak,” the Quaker author and educator Parker Palmer, in writing about his own grueling experience with clinical depression, reminds us that in Deuteronomy 30:19, God says, “I set before you life or death, blessing or curse. Therefore choose life.” Palmer asks, “Why do we need such an obvious reminder?”

Photo by Toni Frissell, 1947

Because the truth is that we choose the wretchedness of drowning all the time. We just don’t like to think about it. We choose to drown when we withdraw from others, when we retreat into cynicism or learned helplessness, when we numb ourselves into oblivion with whatever our drug of choice might be. We choose drowning when we allow ourselves to believe the lie of our own unworthiness, and when we simply give up because we have lost faith in our power to do something, anything.

We choose to drown when we worry that perhaps God wasn’t really talking to us when God said, “For surely I know the plans I have for you…plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” We choose drowning because it’s easier, and we are creatures of comfort. Yet drowning is a perverse comfort that allows us to expect little from ourselves, and for others to expect little of us. There is no courage in drowning.

And this is a time for courage. It’s not a time to rely on hope alone. Jesus tells the disciples to take heart. He calls Peter out of the boat, and it is an invitation to step towards what he longs for, regardless of the wind and the water. And “The Truelove” is a hopeful, human, joyous, clear-eyed call to claim the love, the work, the life that is rightfully ours, whatever it takes.

Above all, it is a call to say, YES.

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For a long time now, I’ve been bewitched by the Gospel message of “good news,” and how that includes desire, longing, and the fulfillment of any type of union for which we are so desperately searching.

It’s just all about love.

—–

“Oh, I’ve loved you from the start, in every single way, and more each passing day. You are brighter than the stars, believe me when I say, it’s not about your scars, it’s all about your heart.” Mindy Gledhill, from the “Anchor” album.

——

Loving God is so full-bodied, so deliriously full of desire. Why and how do we forget this?

—–

“I’m falling even more in love with you, letting go of all I’ve held onto, I’m standing here until you make me move, I’m hanging by a moment here with you.” Matchbox 20 “Hanging by a Moment.”

God is never going to ask us to move. She’s waiting for us to stand the fuck still and feel. All the shame, and inadequacies, and confusions, and longings. It’s all okay, all required.

—–

“Forgetting all I’m lacking, completely incomplete, I’ll take your invitation, and you’ll take all of me…I’m living for the only thing I know, I’m running and I’m not sure where to go, and I don’t know what I’m diving into, just hanging by a moment here with you.” Matchbox 20

Is there anything more holy? More indicative of the quest?

—–

St. Symeon the Theologian did not believe so. In his poem, “Awaken as the Beloved,” (10th century Byzantine), he writes, “We awaken in Christ’s body/As Christ awakens our bodies/and my poor hand is Christ, He enters/my foot and is infinitely me.

…For if we genuinely love Him,/we wake up inside Christ’s body/where all our body, all over/every most hidden part of it,/is realized in joy as Him,/and he makes us, utterly, real/

and everything that is hurt, everything/that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,/maimed, ugly,/irreparably/damaged, is in Him transformed/and recognized as whole, as lovely/ as radiant in His light/we awaken as the Beloved/in every last part of our body.” (in Roger Housden’s “Ten Poems to Change Your Life Again and Again,” pp. 119-20).

—–

“I looked out the window, and stared at the field, where the blue sky and green were colliding. I looked back at you, and I knew we were sealed, by a faith that has ways of providing, sometimes you get there in spite of the route, losing track of your life and what it’s about, the road seems to know when to straighten right out, the closer you come to Elysium.” Mary Chapin Carpenter, “Elysium”

—–

Our desires and longings for true and richly satisfying lives draw us closer to God. S/he is standing by saying, “What have you been waiting for? For God’s sake!” So much of what we hear and learn does not separate us from God, but draws us closer: love, the desire for union, passion for authenticity in all of our life’s work. To live as if love is already a given. Because it it. These are not things to be left to pop culture or peripheral verbalization. God has already tread this path and She is waiting for us to join her, with everything we have to bring. Everything.

—–

“This heart was almost taken, this heart had a love of its own. This heart was reawakened when you came along…this heart was stranded in the winter, was stuck out in a blizzard with its summer clothes. This heart knows when love comes and when it goes. This heart has heard your laughter, this heart has learned how to smile, this heart’ll be your true believer if you’ll stay awhile.” Nanci Griffith, “This Heart”

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Hello friends! Spring is almost sprung, and the Easter season of renewal is most definitely upon us. And I’m dying to hear from you about something.

Change is an odd thing. In the fall, we often dread the darkness of winter. As spring approaches, we gratefully anticipate the longer days and the increase in light. Or we don’t. There is actually a spring/summer version of SAD wherein sufferers feel overwhelmed and anxious about all of the “mores:” more awake time, more noise, more people, etc.

Either way, a change of seasons is a change. And if any readers remember the original spirit of this blog, it was really about YOU, and connecting readers with other readers. So this short post is about a question: do you think intentional change is real?

Meaning, can we really make true changes in our lives? If you would answer, “yes,” I’d love for you to you to share an example. And perhaps, if there is a change you’d like to make in your life, it would be wonderful if you could share how you plan ro approach that.

Is it a diet? A plan to run a 5k or a marathon? A desire to become sober, more tolerant with a partner, more hopeful about a health struggle, a plan for retirement?

As always, thank you for reading. And below is an exquisite poem by Denise Levertov about our potential, and, more importantly, our sources of support for change and power-filled growth. “What I heard was my whole self saying and singing what I knew: I can.”

Yes, you can. The ringing bell in this poem is your awakened voice and your true intentions. And we want to hear about it!

All love,

Leslie

Variation on a Theme by Rilke

A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me–a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task, The day’s blow
rang out, metallic–or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.

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For email-only followers of my blog, WordPress said “Happy Easter!” with a super-glitchy version of my Easter post. So the post is updated and lovely now, and ready and waiting for your wonderful indulgence in reading it.

So sorry! Happy, happy Easter!

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Here’s a thing pretty much everyone who knows me already knows: on April 18, 2014 at 7:45PM, I crashed my car into a public building because I was drunk. It was Good Friday. I was fighting a custody battle with my ex-husband, and because of my actions, I lost almost everything I’d been fighting for.

Later that night, like all crazy addicty people do, I pleaded hysterically with my lawyer–I did not want my parents, who were 800 miles away, to know what had happened. I can still hear his logical, kindly but urgent voice: “Leslie, I understand. But you have no choice. You HAVE to tell them.” I couldn’t see the terrifying path ahead, but he could, and he knew there was no way I’d be traversing it alone.

I was both utterly humiliated and entirely numb. My accident was in the local newspaper. Someone made a video of it with her cell phone. It took about three days for most of my relatively small community to hear about it. I was excruciatingly humiliated, bruised with two black eyes, in constant pain, and at the same time, absolutely numb.

On my first day of treatment, April 24, 2014, which my parents had helped me get into, my God-given addiction therapist, Roxanne, looked at me, terrified and shaking in her office. She was wearing a gold blouse with the coolest black boots I’d ever seen. Her nail polish matched her blouse, and she radiated fearlessness. I wanted to be her, but all I was was fear. Continue reading →